Martial was born at Bilbilis in Spain. At twenty-three years of age he came to Rome, where he resided for thirty-five years in limited circumstances, returning to his birthplace three years before his death. He composed fourteen books of Epigrams.
As a man he was social and popular. As a writer he was eminently sincere (except when playing the courtier), natural, and witty. He had no equal among the poets of his time as a lifelike painter of the actual world of his day.
For Reference: Sellar and Ramsay, Extracts from Martial (Edinburgh,
1884), Introduction; Teuffel, Schwabe, and Warr, History of Roman
Literature, vol. 2, p. 121 ff.; Friedländer, Martialis Epigrammaton
Libri (Leipzig, 1886); Paley and Stone, Select Epigrams from Martial
(London, 1881).
Metres: Choliambic, A. & G. 618, a, b, c. Selections 4, 12.
Phalaecian, A. & G. 623, 624,625. 11: Selections 1, 5, 7, 11. Elegiac,
B. 369, 1, 2; A. & G. 616: Selections 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 13.
1. 5. tu: the attorney who is conducting Martial's case. 6. periuria ff.: to a Roman the name of Carthaginian (Punicus) was a synonym for treachery. 7. Muciosque: Mucius, when captured in an attempt to assassinate King Porsena, showed his insensibility to threats by voluntarily holding his hand in the flame of an altar. Livy, 2. 12. The plurals in this line may be rendered by Sullas, Mariuses, etc.
4. Bassus is met at various points on the Appian Way farther and farther out from Rome. 1. pluit: because of the leaky aqueduct above. 2. Phrygium…ferrum: the priests of Cybele washed their knives in the Almo, a branch of the Tiber near Kome. 3. Horatiorum…campus: the traditional scene of the combat between the Horatii and Curiatii. 4. pusilli: the statue is small. fervet: is alive with worshippers. 10. coronam: hoop. 12. nondum victa faba: too young yet to crunch the bean. 15. Immo: No indeed!
5. 2. sed…fenestra: window-gardens were common in Rome. 4. nemus Dianae: i.e. a forest of 'big timber.' 7. corona: not understood. 16. sus Calydonius: the type of a huge and ferocious wild animal. 17. ungue Prognes: the talon of Progne, i.e. of the swallow. For myth see Harper's Classical Dictionary, 'Tereus.' 20. et…picata: a nut will take the place of the pitch-bedaubed dolium. 22, 23. praedium…prandium: lands…a lunch.
6. To a friend who has long been saying that to-morrow he will change it all and really live. 4. In the Orient, the region of the sunrise, is where that happy to-morrow is hiding, if anywhere. 5. These two are types of longevity.
7. 4. focus perennis: a kitchen fire never idle. 5. toga rara: a dress suit seldom. The toga was connected with burdensome duties, as with the service of client to patron. 6. vires ingenuae: a gentleman's measure of strength. 10. torus: wife. 12. quod…malis: Martial's principle in life, 'to be yourself and not strive to be somebody else.'
8. The eruption is that of 79 A.D., which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii. Epistles 6. 16 and 6. 20 of the younger Pliny, and the final chapters of Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii may be read in this connection. 1. modo: but now. 2. presserat lacus: had filled the vats. 3. Nysae: a mountain in India where, according to the myth, Bacchus was born. 5. Veneris sedes: Venus was the protecting deity of Pompeii. 6. Herculaneum was named from and protected by Hercules. 7. mersa favilla: Pliny, writing of the eruption, says, Epistula 6. 20. 18, 'Everything was covered with deep ashes as with snow.' 8. nec…sibi: and the gods could wish they had not been permitted this.